Philippa Gregory Quotes

I like writing historical fiction.

I have given my word that only death will take me from you.

I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day.

For instance, I have never believed that there is only one person for each person in the world. It doesn’t make the least sense to me. However, in reality, I fell in love at 45 and I am absolutely certain that my now husband is the only man in the world for me, a truth I find both ridiculous and uplifting.

Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

I don’t much like Singapore. It’s very big, very modern and very urbanised. As a rule, I prefer older places where you get a sense of the history.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I’d come home with “lost” kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.

If I could change one thing about myself I’d be less highly strung. I find my sensibility quite high maintenance.

There are many sorts of love. And when you love a man who is less than you dreamed, you have to make allowances for the difference between a real man and a dream. Sometimes you have to forgive him. Perhaps you even have to forgive him often. But forgiveness often comes with love.

Tell my daughter Elizabeth — no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.

I love reading and I love thinking – the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.

I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you’re a woman.

the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it

He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

I try to go to the gym three times a week, and I swim, too.

At the end of the day, I’m writing in a genre that isn’t highly regarded.

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

Fortune’s wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see with her own eyes; but this is not their tempo nor their vision and they cannot tolerate any other.

I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.

I would never lie to anyone about history.

I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there.

In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.